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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27766543">especially that, but i should have known.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/toddxnderson/pseuds/toddxnderson'>toddxnderson</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dead Poets Society (1989)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, blame laina for this one, like raw angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:42:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,285</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27766543</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/toddxnderson/pseuds/toddxnderson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>(you see, i take the parts that i remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what i say or love me back)</p><p>todd spends a lot of time in empty bedrooms</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Todd Anderson/Neil Perry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>especially that, but i should have known.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>pain 😃 twitter mutuals don’t kill me</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You could say what you wanted about the upper management of Welton Preparatory School, but at least they weren’t totally insensitive bastards.</p><p>After the play (after everything, though Todd couldn’t bear to think of the rest that lay beyond that) they hadn’t swooped in immediately in order to strip the bed and pack his belongings into the ripped, impersonal cardboard boxes they later dug out of some back room, hadn’t interrupted or made him go to class. When he had finally returned from the snow, sodden and chilled to the bone, the dorm had been just as he’d left it as he’d run from the place in some awful amalgamation of grief and terror, bed still made neatly in the way Neil had always done it, top flicked over in an exactly parallel strip of cream, unworn green sweater spread across the pillow. </p><p>Charlie had forced him to change <i>(“You’ll freeze to death, Anderson,” he had said, the tender mourning in his voice too raw to leave Todd room for protest)</i> but once he had obeyed, he was alone again, sitting on the bed, in the overbearing winter light. The metal springs creaked under his weight. He couldn’t look up. Couldn’t move his head. </p><p>Instead, he watched the floor, tracked the gentle lines of it- he’d never really thought about it before, the age, the decades of scuffed footsteps falling into it and vanishing, the way it pushed stiffly against his shoes, Newton’s third law every action has an equal and opposite reaction and God Neil’s sock was balled up next to the desk and he would never pick it up; the floor was nothing but a thin slip of barrier, anyway, a layer of imperceptible protection between him and the aching drop below. </p><p>Without looking up, Todd swung himself onto his unmade bed covers and closed his eyes. </p><p> </p><p>The next morning felt worse, somehow. Not that it was remotely possible. </p><p>He woke in the dark, dressed in the dark, slipped towards the door with his head down, not looking. The corridor was silent and drenched in the darkness of early December. Term was ending soon. For the first time since meeting the poets, Todd couldn’t wait.</p><p>His movements were quick and erratic, breath coming heavily, and despite the silence he didn’t care if he woke anyone, didn’t care how loud he was being, and then a door swung open and he barrelled directly into Nuwanda, dark circles under his eyes, face swollen with grief. </p><p>“Todd,” he said solemnly. His tongue sounded stuck in his mouth. “What’re you doing?”</p><p>“Going on a walk.” </p><p>Charlie studied him with a vague air of suspicion. “Not on your own, you’re not.” </p><p>“Charlie-” Todd started, a little too much desperation creeping into his voice for his own liking, but he was cut off. </p><p>“Did you sleep?”</p><p>He couldn’t contain a low, bitter laugh. “No.”</p><p>“Me neither. Put on a coat.”</p><p>It felt just enough like a promise. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>At some point during the second day, a tactful member of administration had packed two full trunks of Neil’s assorted belongings and delivered them to the door of the Perrys’ flower-laden, gray-clad house. Todd did not watch this happen. He had spent the day with Charlie, and later Pitts and Meeks, walking around the grounds in wobbly concentric circles, cutting long streaks across the blank white surface of the world. </p><p>The only reason he had realised this at all was because he’d lost his book. It wasn’t a particularly special favourite, wasn’t even a classic, but he’d been halfway through it for about a week and, as the third morning drew thickly towards afternoon, he found himself in dire need of a distraction. </p><p>It wasn’t on his shelf, as he’d assumed it would be, nor tucked under the edge of his bed as so many of his other novels ended up. Not in the makeshift window seat, nor did it seem to be on the desk they had shared though he’d only had his eyes half open when he checked. It was odd. He could swear he’d left it in the room, had been reading it just before leaving for the play. </p><p><i>Oh.</i> He’d been in a rush to get ready. He’d been caught by surprise. He’d flung it onto Neil’s bed in careless panic, <i>I’m coming alright,</i> had barely registered his actions as he did it; his space was Neil’s, Neil’s space was his. The lines between them were entirely blurred. </p><p>But the more he took in of the room, the less he saw. It was practically empty now, devoid of any sort of personality on the right hand side of the room, <i>Neil’s side,</i>and he really should have seen this coming; the Perrys wouldn’t let his things linger in liminal space. They’d want it all neat, all locked away, under control. Todd couldn’t have it. Todd couldn’t have any of the rest of him. </p><p>He froze. His book on Neil’s bed. Of course it was gone. The administration had seen a novel in a place it had no right to be and had picked a place to put it, a box that would never see the light of day again, one that would fester in a dusty attic for years and years. </p><p>Oh, God. The book that Neil had jokingly signed, <i>one day they’ll all be asking for my autograph so here you go, Todd,<i> and in his looping, gratingly neat style was written a series of words he’d longed more than anything to keep. </i></i></p><p>
 
      <i>Dear Todd, </i>
   
</p><p>
  
      <i>For my biggest fan! I love you (carpe diem!)</i>
    
</p><p>
  
      <i>Neil Perry</i>
</p><p>That had been the morning of the show, before he’d left for rehearsals. Despite so dearly loving and worshipping Keating’s message, that sense of grabbing hold of time and bending it in your favour, he’d never managed to do it. He’s never managed to say it back.
</p><p>
And now Mr Perry had it, and the words were out of his hands and someday he’d forget them, would lie awake wondering exactly where the punctuation sat, the details of his handwriting, the casual flick of ink spotted in the top right hand corner. 
</p><p> He had nothing. Everything was gone, and that was that. 
</p><p>
 For the first time since the first day, Todd sat down on the edge of his bed, took a deep, shuddering breath, and started to cry.
</p><p>
On the fourth day, he looked up. 
</p><p>
It was mostly an accident, almost entirely a waking confusion and longing and early hysteric desperation to hear Neil’s voice replying to him through Monday’s silence, an involuntary twist of the shoulder to check if he was still asleep, eyes closed in all too serious peace. 
</p><p>
But the bed was empty and stripped. There were no books on the desk, no green sweater flung over a chair or a door handle or Todd’s bed, nothing to suggest that there had ever been anyone there at all. Nothing to suggest Todd had ever not been alone. 
</p><p>
Just nothing. 
</p><p>
The silence was too much to bear, and yet it had settled over him for days now in its enveloping weight, had occupied the space between the mindless words the other boys churned out just to fill the air and make it into something more palatable. The silence had hurt, but he’d been used to that- despite what Neil insisted around the others, he wasn’t an endless bundle of energy and most evenings were spent in quiet discussion or comfortable silence. 
</p><p>
But this wasn’t comfortable silence. This silence was painful, excruciating, achingly empty and infinite, and God, he had to stop pretending Neil had just stepped out of the room for a moment because he was gone and he wasn’t fucking coming back.
</p><p>
      <i>“I can take care of myself just fine.”</i>
   
</p><p>

      <i>“No.”</i>
   
</p><p>
 
      <i>“What do you mean, no?”</i>
   
</p><p>

      <i>“No.”</i>
   
</p><p>
He had never felt so old. The sky was a strip of bluish-gray outside the window, casting spates of windy light onto the gap in the fabric of the room, the hole where someone else should be. Someone far more alive than he was, even now, even as he lay in some morgue or funeral home-
</p><p>
The pain was enough to make him double over, gasping. Neil was dead, he was, and there was nothing anyone could do to bring him back, not even Todd, not even if he was willing to die for it too. There was nothing left to save him and maybe he could have, back when there was still time and the words still fit in his mouth and his breathing was still a source of joy and a display of humanness rather than a pathetic, hardened plea. 
</p><p>
He was angry then, at the stars and at fate and at Mr Perry and at Neil, especially Neil, why couldn’t he have held on a little longer why couldn’t he have stayed why couldn’t he have unlocked the door and slipped out into the winter night and stood under Todd’s window with a pebble and a Romeo grin. He hated himself for it more. Hated himself for not being the same hero Neil had always been for him. For failing, again. It was almost pitiful.
</p><p>
That day outside the theatre in the snow, he’d thought he’d lost him for good. He’d thought it again when Charlie’s gentle words cut through his body with more ferocity than any knife. But he was finally starting to realise the truth; losing Neil was a perpetual thing. He would never stop losing him.
</p><p>
After everything, after the O Captain stunt etcetera, Todd hadn’t though he’d be going back. He’d prayed for it, in fact, for the letter that would ensure his safe passage away from that empty room. It had never arrived. 
</p><p>
His parents had forced him to go back, on merit of the fact that he’d barely been allowed to, and though this hardly seemed like a rational or sensible decision, he’d mostly run out of energy to care. He packed his things up. Made the drive back in silence. Walked into his room with his bottom lip chewed half to death and forcing back tears.
</p><p>
He’d mostly been terrified of the prospect of replacement- though the empty side was hard, it would be harder still with some useless new kid messing up the unspoken memorial that had been left behind, throwing his stuff everywhere and asking stupid questions about past roommates and why he was alone. By some small mercy, though, no new students had joined for the spring term, and so there was no need for any filling of rooms. Todd’s self-imposed exile could go on undisturbed.
</p><p>
It disgusted him sometimes, his own isolation. It would have pissed Neil off to no end, but he was gone and therefore had no say in the matter. He went to class, ate silently with Knox sitting at his shoulder protectively, and spent nearly all his additional free time alone in his bedroom (his, not theirs), staring into space. He avoided the extra bed when he could, which wasn’t often. When he brushed past it, he was certain it smelled a little like the cave, like the cloudy scent of the now disbanded Dead Poets Society. He’d always been good at seeing metaphors. He did his best to ignore this one.
</p><p>
He got used to ignoring things. </p><p>
 So much so, he barely registered the gap in the graduation roll call where Perry, Neil, should have been. 
</p><p>
When he moved to college, it was just like that. Two beds, parallel, and his heart twisted in agony to see the other was stripped. It took him a moment to realise that it was only awaiting its occupant, and not yet missing one.
</p><p>
His roommate, when he arrived, kept to himself. Todd couldn’t complain. Any kind of friendship with the boy in the next bed would be a little too close to the sore spot, skirting too near the scar. 
 
</p><p>
 It was already bad enough. Sometimes, the boy would look up from his studying in his stupid round spectacles with a soft expression and the air seemed to be pushing down on Todd’s skin, crashing into him like a wave, the cruel gash at the centre of his chest rearing its ugly head and sending him falling through the floor. He’d make his excuses and run out into the night air, gasping.
</p><p>
 Neither of them spoke about it. They both knew fine well that this wasn’t the kind of behaviour smiled upon by the Ivy League. 
</p><p>

    Charlie called twice a month, though he didn’t have to. Todd told him so at the end of every call,<i> I can take care of myself just fine,</i> and Nuwanda would sigh in exasperated fondness and tell him to come and visit. Another empty bedroom, another wretched half-place. It was more than he could take. Knox called too, though not as often, and he’d spoken to Meeks and Pitts maybe once since graduation. He could feel them drifting out of reach, the end of his last rope sinking away into the sand. He hadn’t seen Cameron in what felt like decades.
</p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>
 The last day of freshman year, his roommate left early, family emergency. He stripped his bed, stored away his possessions and left with little fanfare, dissolving into the night with exactly the same amount of fanfare he’d arrived with. 
</p><p> Todd tried to ignore the empty bed as he lay awake into the midnight hours, but once he had glanced at it, it ensnared him, swallowing his vision, trapping him in place. 
</p><p>
 He looked at the clean impersonality of the bed and all he saw was Neil. 
</p><p>
 He thought, after all this time, he would be used to it.
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can find me on twitter @toddxnderson!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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